Towards a theory of trust in libraries and democracy
In early 2016, the Pew Research Center, Internet and American Life Project released a report that stated that US citizens trusted libraries and librarians more than other public institutions. This dissertation seeks to understand the role that trust plays in US democracy through the lens of public libraries. My research focuses on the concept of trust in United States (US) public libraries – the way trust is defined, how it is earned and how it is given by the US public to public libraries. To complete this investigation, I interviewed individuals from a segment of the population in US society that has experience with consistently negotiating trust in a democracy: Activists. As a group, activists experiences collective breaches of trust and/or injustice from the US government while simultaneously engaging in democratic processes to rectify these injustices and holding the US government accountable. This research contributes to an undertheorized area of library and information science, one of situating public libraries as a model for a democratic society. The study seeks to expand on the concept of trust in public libraries; trust and democracy; and trust, libraries and democracy. This research contributes to the literature by introducing definitions for trust and democracy. I also introduce ontological security as a theoretical frame for public libraries to deepen their understanding of their work and its systemic impact. Anthony Giddens, a prominent English sociologist who is known for his holistic view on modern society, offers a definition of ontological security – “refers to a person's fundamental sense of safety in the world and includes a basic trust of other people and obtaining such trust becomes necessary for a person to maintain a sense of psychological well-being and avoid existential anxiety” (1991). Because ontological security is a concept that is grounded in trust, it serves as the framework to guide this dissertation. The goal is to articulate how ontological security is critical for a functioning democracy and to show that libraries are essential to ontological security. With many political analysts assessing that the state of democracy in the United States is in peril because of the lack of trust in our political institutions, I wish to examine how and why people in the US continue to trust in US public libraries during a time of heightened political distrust and what can we learn from libraries about how we, as a society, can do better. Using interviews with political activists, this dissertation finds that trust is a relationship that should be studied within the context of political theory and libraries and democracy. The interviews outlined the multidimensional ways that libraries, and in some cases librarians, facilitate trust, that a closing of libraries for political reasons would be enough to create an existential crisis.
democracy, ontological security, trust, trust and libraries, democracy and libraries, political activist, libraries, librarians
University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign
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